Abstract

In this paper we show how sustainability can be rigorously defined by making reference to the positivity of the attractors of a dynamical system. Consistently, the sustainability analysis with respect to various system and policy parameters can be performed by using specialized software for the study of the bifurcations of nonlinear dynamical systems. By means of an example concerning the tourism industry, we show how the analysis can be systematically organized and how easy it is to interpret the results of the numerical bifurcation analysis.